Commercial billing systems comprise postpaid and prepaid solutions. In a postpaid solution, the system will track any financial transactions (billing events), calculate the applicable charges for the billing event, and bill the subscriber for such charges at some future time. Because the subscriber is billed at a future date (thus allowing more time for processing), these systems have traditionally been more complex and more flexible than prepaid solutions.
In a prepaid system, the subscriber will pay a certain amount to the enterprise prior to using the service. Traditionally, prepaid solutions are less sophisticated than postpaid solutions. When a billing event is processed, the system will lock the entire balance of a user's account until the call is completed or torn down. Financial transactions (i.e., billing events), which occur against the account, are tracked in near real-time. At completion or tear down, a transaction is created to debit the Account Balance appropriately. In other words, the balance is updated after the transaction is complete. Therefore, current prepaid solutions do not charge the subscriber until the call is completed. But to be effective, prepaid solutions must update the Account Balance/Available Balance of a subscriber very close to the termination of a call. While this process has been relatively effective, several issues still persist. The enterprise wants to do everything possible to prevent a subscriber from incurring a debit balance. This is a particular issue in the mobile phone industry as more and more prepaid rental/disposable phones are utilized by persons who do not want to pay monthly fees for mobile access or by persons who are not approved for a mobile account because of credit problems.
More sophisticated systems will check the Account Balance before processing the billing event. Then, as the charges are being calculated in near real-time, these systems will compare the current charge to the Account Balance/Available Balance at predetermined intervals. If, during one of these “spot-checks,” the current charges exceed the Available Balance, these systems will tear down the billing event. At least two issues still exist with even these sophisticated systems. First, there is a greater chance that the Available Balance will be exceeded with these systems, as it is impractical to check the balance every second of the transaction. Second, as more and more applications are offered over mobile devices (Internet access, e-mail, phone calls, etc.), systems which lock the entire balance for a single event cannot effectively process multiple concurrent transactions.
The vendor wants to do everything possible to prevent a subscriber from incurring a credit balance. Subscribers want to be able to utilize their mobile devices to accomplish more and more functionality. The invention of the present application provides these benefits.